Boston from a Bridge

{Learning Reflection 3}

Over fall break I went to Boston to visit my friend Baily from high school who now attends MIT.  I was glad for the time to explore Boston for the first time.  As the proficient student that I am, I noticed all the water around me as we went adventuring through the city and took a prodigious amount of pictures. 

On the left is Boston from the Harvard Bridge and on the right is Cambridge from the same spot.  There are so many hidden fun facts about this.  First, let me direct your attention to the tallest building in the picture of Boston on the right.  When the project to build this skyscraper was first introduced, the public was not keen about being in the shadow of a skyscraper built for an insurance company.  In response, the architect designed the building to mirror the sky.  He basically tried to make the building invisible.  Also, the building on the left in the picture of Cambridge is an MIT academic building that has windows that light up in shapes like tetris and actually plays tetris with the windows.

Second, this bridge isn’t measured in miles or feet; it’s measured in smoots.  What is a smoot?  It’s a unit of measurement created as part of a MIT fraternity prank in 1958.  The length of the bridge was measured using the height of a student by the last name of Smoot.   Each smoot is 5 feet 7 inches and the total length of the bridge is “364.4 smoots and one ear.”  The paint used that marks every 50 smoots is painted over each year to cover the faded color.  Halfway across the bridge, there is a mark with an arrow pointing toward MIT saying “Halfway to Hell.” 

Third, with the name of Harvard Bridge, it may cause you to believe that it leads to Harvard.  However, the bridge actually leads you directly to MIT.  To get to Harvard you would need to take the metro for a couple stops.  It isn’t called the MIT Bridge because MIT students disapproved of the architecture of the bridge and refused to be the namesake, leaving the honor to Harvard. 

On a more serious note, the most impactful part of my trip was the Holocaust memorial.  It was a series of tall glass columns amid trees with yellowing leaves.  I would not have noticed it if Baily had not pointed it out.  Etched in the glass of each of the six glass towers are six million number sequences representing the numbers that were tattooed on the arms of victims.  Over the numbers, each column has a quote from a survivor of a death camp.  One of the quotes says, “A childhood friend of mine once found a raspberry in the camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present to me that night on a leaf.  Image a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry and you give it to your friend.”  Below each of the glass towers are six pits.  At the bottom of each pit is a glowing fire with steam that envelopes you as you stand and read the quotes etched into the towers.  It’s a chilling heat on a cool autumn day.

There’s a quote I came across once that I love, “Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent in the ideas of living.”  Quotes are great because other people are better at phrasing things than I am.  These repeated words especially apply to this Bostonian trip.  Even though it was only four days that went by pretty quickly, I saw more than sights.  I saw the skyscraper of an architect that listened to the public and designed the seemingly impossible.  I saw the legacy of people embracing life and beginning a tradition of using humans as a legitimate unit of measurement.  I saw the result of people taking pride in their school and the name of their school.  And I saw a memorial honoring those who suffered from utter evil and transformed their experiences into six towers of hope, faith, and remembrance.